One of the best parts about hip-hop/rap/R&B/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is that somehow, someway, a bad song can actually be a good song. In a bizarre turnabout of what we usually believe, there is not only an economic demand but a cultural demand for shitty rap songs. When society is out grinding at the club, society doesn’t want to listen to the social-political musings of Common. Society wants to grind all up on you. Read the rest of this entry »

[Ed. note: This was previously published over at MidwestSwing, which is now defunct (pours out a little for his homies). Please enjoy it if you haven’t read it before.]

I don’t know much about anything, but I read a lot of shit people put out on the internet, including our own. When reading, I often come about “Top 10″ lists. Sometimes I’ll find a “Top 15″ list. And sometimes, some crazy people like Complex come out with “Top 100″ lists of the decade. Here’s the thing about these lists — I hate them. Read the rest of this entry »

I was flipping through my Jay-Z playlist this afternoon in the LeSabre, and for some reason a thought popped into my head that I couldn’t shake: Jay-Z doesn’t do his choruses. This isn’t to say that he never sings/raps his chorus, but that he usually lets someone else to the heavy lifting. Read the rest of this entry »